Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904 - 1987) was born in St. Petersburg, the son of
a Russian civil servant. Early on, he showed a talent for music, playing
the piano by ear at the age of six and, soon after, trying to compose.
His formal musical education waited until Kabalevsky was fourteen, when
he and his family moved to Moscow. There he attended the Scriabin School
of Music from 1919 to 1925. In 1925, he entered the Moscow Conservatory,
where he studied composition with Nikolai Miaskovsky. Kabalevsky became
an assistant instructor at the Conservatory and earned full
professorship in 1939. His style is marked by clear tonality and
energetic rhythms, which made it easy for him to abide by the Communist
Party’s decree for music that was socially usable. He never abandoned
his early interest in young people and produced numerous instrumental
compositions and songs for them. He regularly corresponded with students
at some 150 high schools, giving them advice and direction in their
musical interests. Popular in his repertoire for band are the overture
to his comic opera Colas Breugnon and his fast-paced
suite The Comedians.

Colas Breugnon Overture

Kabalevsky’s first opera, Colas Breugnon, was first
performed in Lenin­grad in February 1938 at the height of socialist
realism. The spirited and sometimes comical Overture
summarizes the three act opera based on a novel by Romain Rolland. The
story revolves around a 16th Century Colas Breugnon, a Breton master
carpenter who thwarts a villainous Duke, thereby drawing parallels to
the workers of the Soviet Union. The opera introduces episodes from
Colas’ past and present loves, including his wife. The music turns
dramatic when returning soldiers bring the bubonic plague to the village
and the Duke orders everything burned, including Colas’ carved statues.
A widowed Colas survives and he renews a past love. Com­edy returns and
Colas has revenge when the Duke’s commissioned statue is revealed
showing the Duke seated backwards on a donkey.

Sonatina No. 1

The Sonatina No. 1 was written in 1930 and was the thirteenth
of his more than 100 compositions. Written as a virtuoso piano solo, it
was important in earning international recognition for the composer.
Marvin Nelson has developed a marvelous orchestration in the vein of
what Ravel achieved for Moussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition.
The flowing rhythms and rich chords of the original have been further
enriched by the tonal range available from the full wind ensemble. The
relaxed Allegro and Andantino movements build the
melodies that challenge the ensemble in the brisk Presto final
movement with an active interplay between the brass and woodwind
sections.

Vasily Kalinnikov was born in 1866 in Voina in the Government of
Orlov, Russia. He received early musical training at the Orlovsky
Seminary, where, at the age of 14, he directed the choir. He received a
scholarship in 1884 that allowed him to attend the Philharmonic Music
School in Moscow. He tried to earn a living by playing bassoon, timpani,
or violin in theater orchestras, but the bitter poverty of his family
forced him to abandon his studies. Tchaikovsky, impressed by
Kalinnikov’s skill, secured him an appointment as conductor of the
Italian Opera in Moscow for the 1893-4 season. Stricken by tuberculosis,
he was forced to relinquish the position after just a few months. He
moved to the relative warmth of the South Crimea, where he completed his
two symphonies, orchestral intermezzi, a cantata, and incidental
theatrical music. He died in 1901, two days before his 35th birthday.

Finale to Symphony No. 1

Kalinnikov’s First Symphony was a rousing success at its 1897
premiere at the Russian Music Society in Kiev. It was well received in
Moscow, Vienna, and Berlin. The ‘Finale’ provides a summation of the
full symphony that is thoroughly national in character. Starting with a
broad, sonorous melody, we hear contrasts in texture and color.
Plaintive and dance-like motives evolve into a spirited and triumphant
ending.

Although there had been no musical background in his family, John
Kandor (b. 1927) began playing the piano at the age of four. His aunt
taught him musical chords, which he credits as the foundation of his
musical knowledge. His earliest experiences in the musical theater came
from conducting orchestras for stock companies and making dance
arrangements for the musicals "Gypsy" and "Irma la Douce." In
1962, he formed a song partnership with the lyricist, Fred Ebb.
Together, they experienced successes with Cabaret (1966), The
Happy Time (1968), and Zorba (1968).

Cabaret, Selections for Concert Band

From the 1966 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and the 1972 motion
picture success, this rousing John Kander score has been competently
arranged for concert band by Norman Leyden. The show is set in Berlin in
1930 and reflects a picture of decadent Germany in the years just before
the rise of Hitler. The listener will recognize the tunes of Willkommen,
Tomorrow Belongs To Me, Cabaret, Pineapple, Meeskite,
and Married, before the finale reprise of the theme song. A
variety of keys and styles are employed, adding color and contrast to
the work. Solo passages are assigned to the French horn, euphonium, and
oboe.

Bin Kaneda (1935 - ) earned his B.A. degree in composition from the
University of Tokyo in 1958. In 1956 and 1957, he won first prize at the
Mainichi Newspaper composition contest with his chamber and orchestral
music works. He was commissioned to write the required composition for
the All Japan Band Contest in 1964, 1967, and 1972. Since 1971, Kaneda
has been an associate professor in the music department at Gifu
University.

Ondo (for Symphonic Band)

The Ondo introduces and builds on three basic themes. These
very rhythmic themes begin softly amongst the sections of the band,
building in a long crescendo to the strong finale, where all
three themes appear simultaneously. The percussion section is featured
in this work.

Donald Thomas Kellett (USA, 1913 - 1991) was a career officer in the
U. S. Army, retiring with the rank of Lt. Colonel in 1969. He was a
professor of military science for three years at the Command and General
Staff College and served as military advisor to embassies in Spain,
Chile, and Indochina. A musicologist and self-taught composer, he wrote
many military marches. His Follow Me is the official march of
the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the Secretary of
the Army is the official march of its namesake. Born in New York
City in 1913, Kellett received a BA degree at Westminster College and
did graduate work at Columbia University and the University of
Wisconsin. Prior to enlisting in the Army in 1941, he was on the
editorial staff of the "New York Daily News" and taught high school
English. After retiring from military service, he became an officer of
the Bank of America. He was a 22-year resident of Atherton, California,
at the time of his death.

Congressional Honors March

This march was dedicated to the Members of the Congress of the United
States and was first performed on Flag Day, 17 June 1959, at a ceremony
at Fort Myer, Virginia, presided over by Secretary of the Army William M
Brucker. The work opens with a comfortable march tune and tempo led by
the high brass. The strains of America the Beautiful can be
heard in the background. A flute filigree can be heard, next, above a
dolce clarinet choir. Picking up energy, a reprise of America the
Beautiful is carried by the brass to a grand finale.

This march has the power to conjure up the whole magnificent scene of
the old tent circus -- all the aromas, all the sounds, all the sights,
and, of course, the circus band. King wrote this march for the
thirty-two-piece Barnum and Bailey Circus Band in 1913 at the request of
the director. King was twenty-two at the time and was preparing to join
the band as a euphonium player. The euphonium can be heard in a rousing
countermelody.

The Purple Pageant

This concert march was dedicated by King to Glenn C. Bainum, Director
of Bands at Northwestern University. In his 27 years of service as
conductor of the bands, choirs, and orchestras, Bainum provided the
leadership that was at a level set by William D. Revelli at the
University of Michigan and A. A. Harding at the University of Illinois.
He developed many new and spectacular formations with the electrically
illuminated 200-member marching band. One can assume that the title of
the march is a tribute to the pageantry of the purple uniformed bandsmen
presenting one of these shows.

Based on a number of nautical songs and sea chanties, Sea
Songs was written for the 350th anniversary of the city of
Boston and it was premiered there by the US Marine Band in May 1980.
Notable among the songs are twelve variations of “Drunken Sailor.” Also
heard is “O Shenandoah,” which originated as a river chanty and became
popular with sea-going crews in the early 1800s.

Libby Larsen was born on Christmas Eve 1950 in Wilmington, Delaware.
She still lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her family moved when
she was 3. In that year, she remembers watching her sister play the
piano and enjoying its sound and vibrations. When her sister finished,
she climbed on the stool and composed a series of clusters which she
rearranged and wrote down for her mother’s approval. She learned to sing
and sight read starting in the first grade at Christ the King School in
Minneapolis. Ms. Larsen earned her Bachelor, Masters, and Doctoral
degrees at the University of Minnesota, studying composition with
Dominick Argento. In 1973, she co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum,
now the American Composers Forum. She has composed over 200 works
spanning the genres from orchestra, band, and choir to intimate chamber
and solo voice and instrumental music. She has a 16 year old daughter.

Northern Star Fanfare

The Northern Star Fanfare was written for the 1987 inauguration
of Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich. This short brass fanfare has
percussive rhythm patterns of the trumpets against the warmer color of
the horns and lower brass.

Morten Lauridsen was born in 1943 in the town of Colfax, situated
amidst wheat-covered hills of eastern Washington state, and grew up
around Portland, Oregon. He worked as a Forest Service firefighter and
lookout; it was a time for contemplation and he decided to turn his life
toward music. He enrolled in Whitman College but soon transferred to the
University of Southern California to study composition with Halsey
Stevens and Ingolf Dahl. He has served on USC’s faculty since he began
teaching there in 1967. His compositions of sacred and folk music have
become mainstays of the vocal repertoire. In 2005, he was named
“American Choral Master” by the National Endowment of the Arts. In a
White House ceremony in 2007, the President bestowed the National Medal
of Arts on Lauridsen “for his composition of radiant choral works
combining musical beauty, power, and spiritual depth that have thrilled
audiences worldwide.” Lauridsen divides his time between Los Angeles and
a summer residence, without electricity or running water, on Waldron
Island in northwestern Washington, where he composed O
Magnum Mysterium and Lux
Eterna, in peace and serenity.

O Magnum Mysterium

O Magnum Mysterium is a
responsory chant from the Matins of Christmas. Many composers have
rendered the chant into contemporary settings. Premiered in 1994, Morten
Lauridsen’s original choral rendition has become one of the world’s most
performed compositions. The band transcription by H. Robert Reynolds has
retained the flow and beauty of the choral original. Morten Lauridsen
wrote: “For centuries, composers have been inspired by the beautiful O Magnum Mysterium text with its
depiction of the birth of the new-born King amongst the lowly animals
and shepherds. This affirmation of God’s grace to the meek and the
adoration of the Blessed Virgin are celebrated in my setting through a
quiet song of profound inner joy.” The variety of color and dynamics has
been achieved through skillful blending of the brass and woodwinds. The
thinly scored passages reflect the sacredness of the event, while the
tutti sections resonate with warmth and richness.

Born in Schaarbeek, Belgium, in 1897, Pierre Leemans went on to study
piano, harmony, orchestration, and composition and began his teaching
career in 1917 at the Etterbeek Music Academy. At 22, he served his year
of military duty and returned to teach music again until 1932, when he
became the pianist-conductor-program director for the official
broadcasting company, N.I.R. In 1934, he won the composition contest for
the official march of the 1935 Brussels World Exposition. He founded the
Schaarbeek High School Choir in 1940 and won a composition contest for
school songs three years later. From entries by 109 anonymous composers,
works by Leemans were selected for first and second prize for the 1958
Brussels World's Fair. After a lifetime of composing, teaching,
performing, and conducting, he died in 1980 at the age of eighty-two.

March des Parachutistes Belges

While he was serving his year of military duty at the end of World War
I, Leemans' regimental commander asked him to compose a march; it was
begun, but never finished. Near the end of World War II, he was having
dinner with a group of paratroopers and was again asked to compose a
march. As the group commander drove him home that night, the march theme
came back to his mind, and he wrote out all of the parts for the
official March of the Belgian Paratroopers after
reaching home. A quiet, unaggressive essay in the easy-paced European
style, it is set in the form of a “patrol”; the music marches on from
the distance, plays, and passes. This arrangement was made by Charles
Wiley at the request of his Lamar (Texas) University Band students for
the march's first U.S. performance.

Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in London, England and received his
education from Westminster School and Oxford University. The deviser of
the children's board game "Calamity!," Lloyd Webber is far better known
to audiences as the composer of hit musicals, including Jesus Christ
Superstar, Evita, Cats, Starlight Express,
and Aspects of Love.

Selections from The Phantom of the Opera

This Warren Barker arrangement of tunes recalls the intriguing events
of the classic tale. The sweetness of the tunes Think of Me and
Angel of Music is abruptly interrupted by The Phantom of the
Opera. The love themes develop in All I Ask Of You and The
Point Of No Return, ending with the dramatic The Music Of The
Night.

Ronald Lo Presti was born October 28, 1933 in Williamstown,
Massachusetts. Coincidentally, this was the same town in the Berkshire
Mountains where Cole Porter bought his home in 1940 after returning from
Paris. Lo Presti received his Bachelor of Music (1955) and Master of
Music (1956) from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under
Louis Meninni and Bernard Rogers. After graduation, he worked as a music
teacher and clarinet instructor at several public schools. From 1959 to
1960, he was an instructor in music theory at Texas Technological
College, Lubbock. In another two-year period, he served as
Composer-in-Residence with the Winfield, Kansas public schools. An
appointment as assistant professor of theory and composition at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania followed. From 1964 to his death on October
25, 1985, Lo Presti was a professor of music and theory at Arizona State
University, Tempe.

Elegy For a Young American

The Elegy For a Young American was written in 1964 and is
dedicated to the memory of President John F. Kennedy. The many stages of
mourning can be felt as the work unfolds. A quiet adagio sets a
tone of respect and solemnity in the beginning. Feelings of shock and
denial are reflected by the dynamics and octave jumps in the melody.
Anger and remorse express themselves, but they are replaced with a
resolution of the loss and an allegro celebration of the contributions
of this great American. The maestoso closing reminds us again of
our loss.

The son of a famous Viennese operetta tenor, Frederick Loewe began to
study piano when he was five and at thirteen became the youngest pianist
ever to appear as soloist with the Berlin Symphony. Composition also
began early; during his early boyhood, he completed several musical
numbers that were used in his father's act in a variety theater. Loewe
came to the United States in 1924 to further his career as a piano
virtuoso. Unable to get a hearing from managers, he decided to give up
serious music. Supporting himself for a while by playing piano in a
Greenwich Village night club and working as a bus boy in a cafeteria,
Loewe eventually adopted a nomadic lifestyle, wandering across the US,
taking on any job that came along. He prospected for gold, punched
cattle in Montana, worked as a riding instructor in New Hampshire,
delivered mail by horseback, engaged in professional boxing bouts in
Brooklyn, and played piano on cruise ships and in beer halls. He had
some success in the 1930's, when some of his songs made it into Broadway
productions.

A change of fortune came when he met Alan Jay Lerner (1918 - ) at the
Lambs Club in New York. Lerner was a Harvard graduate who had written
sketches and lyrics for two Hasty Pudding shows. His ambition was to
write texts and lyrics for the Broadway theater. His meeting with Loewe
brought him a composer with similar dreams of Broadway. Their first
production was Life of the Party, which opened on Broadway in
1942. Brigadoon was their first Broadway hit, premiering in 1947
and running for 581 performances. Their other collaborative hits were Paint
Your Wagon (1951), My Fair Lady (1956), Gigi
(1957), and Camelot (1960).

Lerner & Loewe in Concert

Written in the style of musical theater overtures, this arrangement by
Warren Barker brings us memorable songs from the great Broadway
productions of the lyricist Alan J. Lerner and the composer Frederick
Loewe. Included in this arrangement are the romantic I Could Have
Danced All Night and the cockney song Get Me To The Church On
Time from "My Fair Lady" (1956). The screen adaptation of
Colette's "Gigi" (1957) provided us with Thank Heaven For Little
Girls and The Night They Invented Champagne. The lavish
production of "Camelot" (1960) included the lovely If Ever I Would
Leave You.

My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is the musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s
“Pygmalion.” The 1956 Broadway production greatly pleased the public and
the critics, earning many awards, including the longest-running musical
at the time, with 2,717 performances. The lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner and
the music of Frederick Loewe told the story of Professor Henry Higgins’
bet to transform an unrefined Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into
a lady, with all the plot turns involving love and ego. Robert Russell
Bennett’s arrangement includes “With A Little Bit Of Luck,” “On The
Street Where You Live,” “Wouldn't It Be Loverly,” “Get Me To The Church
On Time,” “I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face,” and “I Could Have Danced
All Night.”

Robert Lowden (1920 - 1999) was a prolific composer and arranger whose
music reached far beyond the borders of his native New Jersey. He penned
over 400 advertising jingles in his long career, but orchestras and
bands know him for his many arrangements of popular and show tunes.
Lowden studied at Temple University to be a music educator. During World
War II, he served in the U.S. Army Band. He returned to his birthplace,
Camden, New Jersey, to teach during the 1950s. Lowden wrote for the
Somerset label and its feature group, 101 Strings. He served as the lead
arranger for the Philadelphia Pops and often took a bow at performances
of his works by the Ocean City Pops at the Music Pier.

Armed Forces Salute

Each of our military services is saluted in this medley. The Army leads
off with The Caisson Song, followed by Semper Paratus
(Always Ready), the marching song for the Coast Guard. The
honorees of the The Marines’ Hymn and The U.S. Air Force
are obvious. Equally recognizable is the Navy’s Anchors Aweigh.
Lowden has skillfully woven patriotic phrases as the transitions between
the major melodies. Can you recognize them?